Friday, December 18, 2009

W-space neighbors and utilization

With having seen more than 2 dozen adjoining C2 systems from my static C2 exit, I have seen quite a variety of W-space, and thought I would share some observations.

First off, confirming that W-space (at least the lower C1-C3 classes) is getting much more densely populated, I would estimated that 75% of all C2's that have opened from my system were populated by a POS. All but 2 were online and defended.

The interesting bit comes when you scan these "inhabited" system. For example - If you were to land in my system and scan, you would get exactly 3 hits: two WH's (for each of the static exits, one LowSec and one C2) and a Structure (my POS). Meaning, you could tell that I am an active W-space player because I farm out my system faster than it respawns and as such, rely on the recurring adjoining C2 for additional "farming". As such, my system could be considered "empty".

With the respawn rate being so slow, you would expect that any populated/colonized W-space system that had been colonized at least a week ago would/should be "empty", just like my system. However, of the systems I have seen with a POS, most have had plenty of sites available, typically including sleeper sites, ladar, and Grav. This is a curiosity to me. If I am investing in the POS maintenance costs, I need to cover expenses by farming my system.

The last 5 adjoining systems have all had a POS, but none had anyone present/online at the time I evaluated the system for farming. All 5 had multiple Radar/Mag/Ladar/Sleeper sites, to the extent that not once have I had the time to completely clear all of the sites in the adjoining system. Not that I am complaining - if all of these settled systems looked like mine, I would probably be moving out of W-space.

Why would you colonize your W-space system without completely leveraging the available resources?

13 comments:

some ppl in my corp have a theory that say, leaving a grav site in system, will increase the spawn rate of gravs within your system.hence the 'if you do all your sites, youll bottom it out' theory.they might be leaving 1 of each site unrun/unscanned (dont go past 25% on it once you know what it is) so they get more, or so the theory goes

My WH partner (my son) and myself have wonderred the same thing. We are in the exact same situation as the OP Lvl 2 WH with static low sec and a D382. Insearching and farming the adjoining WH we have often thought why someone would go to the trouble of setting up the POS and then not work it down. Sometimes we have thought that the hole may have a lvl 3,4 or 5 static that they use as a jumping point and that is where they work...

I hope someone who leaves all those goodies unattended explains what they are doing...

I settled a class 2, static Highsec (or so it seemed). I did a deathstar, had it al ready to go, even had redundant Scan alts, so if I got a complete wipe by zee russians (nothing against them, just thinking of Planet Risk) I would still be able to go like 2 more times (brought etra ships).

The problem came in the form of being farmed.I had daily visits to my system (due to being hugging hi sec space) that it was wiped frequently. Down time ends when I leave for work, so I would refresh my WH on dotlan and see the jumps progressively get higher. To boot, I felt like I was chained to EVE now. If I wanted to take a month off, I had to be fuelled up and etc. It started to feel draining. SOOOooo... I packed up and pulled out of there. I am now setting up a POS in a seldom visited many belt system deep in empire (no stations near by) and going to orca my ore back and forth.

I should have started with that I am a miner, and I find having 5 accounts makes mining... stressful. Add to it seeing a BC hop into where you are in a WH, and even if he dosent lock you, the potential that you could get wiped out just because he is bored... yeah, no thanks. Don't get me wrong, the ore is GREAT, but having to bring in gear just to be wiped and have to do it again and again... well anyhow, I am done for now with WHs. If POS could be setup so I could be delegated a hanger in a corp hangar to my own whimsy or I could rent time for a slot on a POS, then I would skip going lone wolf. Ah well, done with the ADD comment...

For me the biggest thing is time. I can only do so much so quickly in my drake as a solo explorer before I have to return to studying or get out of the house. Needless to say, I do what I can in a day's pewpew and am very satisfied with it, but I can only work my system over so quickly.

By the way, I'm LordRay093, the gent who lost his the investment when my friends settled in a C1 and then lost the wh. I've pleasantly resettled into a new C2 and have already remade my lost investment as well as the cost of redeploying thanks to all the work you've put into maintaining the information in your blog. If you happen to come across the small tower "Pandora" anchored by GalacTECH Unlimited, drop a line. You're welcome for drinks on the observation deck anytime o7

For us, it was strictly time. We settled into a C2 that had a good 50 or so sites and never had the time to clear them all. Rather than pay for the POS fuel, my boyfriend and I have decolonized w-space and are now just visiting to run sites and then gtfo.

One thing I'll definitely agree with is the crowding of the lower-class wormhole systems. It's so crowded that, apparently, people will even colonize (or try to) a system that's already settled, which happened to me earlier today.

I have a small POS, bare bones setup. As I'm solo, why bother with more when you can't fend off a concerted attack no matter what! Anyways, I log on today and lo and behold! a Russian corp has tossed down a large POS. With 20 minutes till it was anchored, I tried to... 'discourage' them by destroying 3 Indy's and a Buzzard, but then had to go offline due to family matters. I come back, POS is online and I'm thinking about evacuation.

Collapsed the hole they entered through to delay them, and am currently dismantling my setup.

I knew lower class holes were crowded, but this is the first time someone has just blatantly set up shop in my system!

Now to find another one of those oh-so-elusive unoccupied Class 2's...

PS: Thanks a ton for maintaining your blog over the months, it has been an invaluable source of information for me, and gave me the confidence to decide I could set up a POS in a wormhole solo. Best of luck to you!

In my Class 3 I regularly blow up the holes to prevent anybody getting in. Even though I spent days getting perimeter safes (I find its usually only the centre line of a system that can be bookmarked) I returned to find I'd been observed by a cov ops (he must have spent hours) who gang warped in about 20 kids in frigates to annihilate my fleet and loot. If they'd ransomed me, I would have given over 1 bil, but it was over in 5 seconds. The fact that they dont even care about the loot and run around Wspace in packs of punishers and maledictions is incredibly frustrating.

Its not the isk, its the time it takes to recover back to where you were.

I'm a two month character in Eve and I have found I love scanning and exploring. This includes looking in wormholes. I don't have the skills or the cash to even think about living in one, though. But if I find a good prospect, I'll find a friend or corpmate who wants to mine or plex with me.

However, they seem to be mostly full, and not cleaned out, as you mention. Which puzzles me, too.

However, there's one case that doesn't puzzle me. Twice now I've seen very small holes, c1-2, with carriers in them, and an array for building more carriers.

I can't believe that someone built a carrier just to be king of that one wh. I think I found hidden construction sites for 0.0 based alliances. In such a case, I'm not surprised by seeing resource underutilization.

My corp initially set up a POS in a Class 2 only to have it taken out 10 days into our venture; not from current WH inhabitants, but by high-sec wanderers. We decided to try again and ease ourselves into the WH experience by settling in an unoccupied Class 1.

One-hundred-twelve days later, we have grown beyond any of our expectations. None of us (4 members of the corp plus 2 alts) ever thought that it would be as profitable as it has turned out. I know it doesn’t compare to the number of sites of a Class 2 or above, but the fact that we don’t have to extensively defend our POS from a fleet of BS’s has given us all piece of mind along with additional CPU and Power resources that would otherwise go to defense structures.

We have recently utilized that extra CPU and Power to bring in a Medium Intensive Refinery as well as a Large Ship Assembly. We currently have 2 BS’s built and they have really made it easy to bring down the sleeper sites. We are currently mining to build a Rorqual so that we can eventually compress all the ore and avoid the 25% loss on the refining array, although my corp mates are really pushing for a Dreadnought to discourage additional settlers.

Fly safe, and keep blogging……all of us out here in WH space really appreciate and look forward to it.

Don - great to hear that you stayed with it and really made it work. You must have a static exit to another C1 or C2 then?

Toldain - I have seen this as well, and typically in C1's, where there are multiple Large POS's with a range of ship/ammo/subsystem assembly arrays - definitely not there for the W-space loot, just a safer place to manufacture.

people build carriers to aid in pos defense, and to escalate sites. 6 battleships is a nice bonus for every capital you bring to the fight.

As to not running the sites when i first moved into mine (a c-2) my crew and i annihilated the sites, then tried to raid other wh's but usually were met with stiff resistance. So after doing some research, data points to the fact that a wh with active anoms will spawn unkowns at a much faster rate. so i-3 a day, leave the rest and run the ones you scan down. There is actually method to madness when it comes to wh's gl to you all

My Alliance lives in a c2. We have a carrier and are building a 2nd one and a dread. Then there are at least 3 large POSes which are heavily defended. It's all for defense. (And that's when we aren't on high alert.) Why do we want to stay so bad. The system we have has a good mix of planets for POS fuel, a static high sec, and a static c1. We do a lot of mining in the system, but the money maker is the static C1 connection. Every day there is a new C1, and we run the site in the C1. If we aren't happy with the C1 we pop the hole and get a new one. We also have another settled C1 for some of our mining corps.

The carrier has come in handy when we get visitors in strength. Even if you don't want to risk the carrier you can delegate the fighters.

PS- We always leave a few 100% sites to attract unsuspecting victim’s from high space.